Europe unveils hi-tech satellite to speed up extreme weather warnings

OHB SE

07/09/2022 16:54

By Tim Hepher
    CANNES, France, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Europe on Wednesday
unveiled the first of a 4 billion euro ($4 billion) family of
satellites designed to give earlier warning of extreme weather
that has been causing havoc across the globe this year.
    The result of 12 years of development for the European Space
Agency and 30-nation EUMETSAT, the MTG-I1 satellite will be
launched by the end of this year on an Ariane 5 rocket and put
sharper eyes in space over Europe and Africa.
    The 3.8-tonne spacecraft will beam back images from next
year and will be joined in geostationary orbit by three more
MTG-I imaging satellites and two MTG-S "sounding" satellites
capable of slicing the atmosphere, much like a medical scanner,
by 2030.
    The hope is that forecasters will gain precious hours in
predicting near-term storms and floods that can cost lives. 
    And scanning the atmosphere will provide a better picture of
current conditions to feed into their computerised models.
    "There is a real challenge today ... to be able to compute
the initial (weather) state," said Herve Roquet, deputy director
of research at Meteo France.
    The initiative highlights a race to grapple with weather
disruption exacerbated by global warming and which is estimated
to have cost $100 billion worldwide in 2021 alone.
    While the MTG-I imaging satellites will bring Europe roughly
in line with GOES-R operated by NASA and the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration, albeit with a newer lightning
mapper, MTG-S will deploy sounders in space for the first time.
    European officials say China has experimented with the
technology with lower accuracy but is yet to deploy it, while
acknowledging Beijing's space programme is developing fast.
    Engineers say the sounding or scanning technique will
capture storms before they become visible on traditional radar.
    "As the storm is developing, we can see it. It is picking it
up and we can then predict it," said Paul Blythe, MTG programme
manager at the European Space Agency.
    On Wednesday, engineers at a shorefront clean-room complex
run by Franco-Italian Thales Alenia Space in Cannes, France,
swarmed around the satellite, shaped like a small truck, to make
final checks before its solar array is fitted in coming days.
    Their protective clean-room gowns bore logos reflecting the
European system under which companies share work according to
national investment, with Thales Alenia Space leading the
project in partnership with Germany's OHB and Italy's Leonardo.
    "The more responsive and more capable these satellites are
the better they can follow extremely dynamic weather events,"
said Cristian Bank, development director at EUMETSAT.
    ($1 = 1.0055 euros)

 (Reporting by Tim Hepher
Editing by Mark Potter)
 ((tim.hepher@thomsonreuters.com; +33 1 49 49 54 52; Reuters
Messaging: tim.hepher.thomsonreuters@reuters.net))